Some years ago I started investigating my own family
roots in Scotland, really having no idea about anything except that my
grandfather had been born in Glasgow and had lived there until he came south
after the First World War.

A decade later, never having shaken the thrill of
digging through church records and crawling around graveyards, I have tracked
all my Scottish roots, have made a good stab towards following my fatherís
English ones, and have investigated families for any friends who stood still
long enough to tell me who their grandparents were and where, vaguely, they
came from!

The Ďunrelatedí families are those I have
investigated either for friends or because in some way they touched on my own
~ and then proved not to be mine!†† The
English families are in various little groupings as within these groups all
the families are related in some way or other, usually to the living person
for whom the research was done.

In the course of investigating, I have used as many
primary sources as possible but inevitably there comes a time, particularly
once back to the early 1700ís, when records no longer exist, if they ever
did, or they donít provide as much corroborating evidence as I would really
like, and sometimes in these circumstances I have made educated guesses and
assumptions.†

Where I have done this I have indicated it and given
my reasons for the assumption, but I am continually checking for new records
to either prove or disprove my theory, so the data here may change.† I am also more than happy to hear from
anyone who point out any errors!